# Finals



## I liek Squirtles (Dec 5, 2014)

Pretty self-explanatory. What finals will you be taking and when?

My school divides each semester into two periods. If a student gets an A in both periods for a certain class, you don't take that class's final (there are some exceptions: AP classes, and a math teacher that left who gave the final to everyone and who I really wanted to take classes with). I managed to get an 82 in English in the first period because of a very ugly F, so that's the only final I'm taking.


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## Autumn (Dec 5, 2014)

Music History, Conducting, guitar, piano, Italian, Music in Therapy. All sometime on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday next week. I'm not in the mood to study for Music History since I have more pressing matters to worry about (guitar and Music in Therapy especially!) but alaaaaas


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## kyeugh (Dec 5, 2014)

Oh, instrument finals sound fun!  I'm sure they're probably nerve-wracking because they involve performance, but at least it's something actually enjoyable.

I just have Biology.  It can't possibly be that hard, really; in general, cells are not incredibly difficult.  The most difficulty I'll encounter is probably naming the stages of mitosis based on pictures or something-- I never cared much for memorisation.


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## Music Dragon (Dec 5, 2014)

At the moment I'm taking Enumerative Combinatorics, Advanced Real Analysis, Chaotic Dynamical Systems and Commutative Algebra & Algebraic Geometry.

I'm not at all worried about the chaos theory, it's just an introductory course so it's pretty basic stuff. Everything else has got me panicking, though. Especially the combinatorics. They make it sound so easy, but then they're all "find a bijection" and it's just impossible! How are you supposed to figure out these moon logic puzzles? Ugh! And don't even get me started on the algebra. What the hell is a sheaf? What even is a sheaf??


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## kyeugh (Dec 5, 2014)

Music Dragon said:


> Ugh! And don't even get me started on the algebra. What the hell is a sheaf? What even is a sheaf??


Isn't that the thing you put a sword in?


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## M&F (Dec 5, 2014)

As of last week, all done and done. Other than the two of them I outright didn't show up for, I think I've done pretty well this time. Still, those grades are taking their sweet fucking time going online.


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## blazheirio889 (Dec 5, 2014)

I have animal physiology this Monday, cell and systems biology and biopsychology on Wednesday, and social psychology on the 18th. 

My university loves to organize things so that all the science and math courses are lumped in the beginning so we can't possibly study for them all properly so hopefully we'll fail and they can kick some students out??? idk man. 

I'm pretty confident for animal physio and I don't need that high of a mark on biopsych since I did well on previous tests, but I'm nervous about cell and systems because I don't think I'll have enough time to study well, and I need a fairly high mark for social psychology, so. A bit worrying, but all in all not bad, I guess.


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## Flora (Dec 5, 2014)

i forget the exact days but i have a jazz final, music theory I and music of ireland (are you sensing a theme). i think also shakespeare tour but he has told us zero about that

for directing we _technically_ have to come in but we're just eating and talking about the class


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## Vipera Magnifica (Dec 5, 2014)

I've got exams in Thermodynamics & Statistical Mechanics, Electricity & Magnetism, Linear Algebra, and Probability & Statistics.

I'm not too worried about the last two, but both the Thermo and the E&M exam are on Monday and I am pretty worried about them. n_n


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## Superbird (Dec 5, 2014)

My school doesn't have finals until May. Except for Calc 3, because that's a transfer course with a college, but I'm not worried about that. Mid-term exams are in january, though, for which I have to take English, CompSci, Statistics, Psychology, and Physics. All of which are AP classes but none of which I am struggling in except for Physics. Which shouldn't be hard but it's incredibly difficult - no matter how well I think I understand it, I don't.


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## Music Dragon (Dec 5, 2014)

Dazel said:


> Isn't that the thing you put a sword in?


Oh god, now I have to learn about _swords_ too??


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## ultraviolet (Dec 6, 2014)

art student, don't have finals. 8D


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## RespectTheBlade (Dec 7, 2014)

This post is preceded by nervous laughter. 

Astro, Calc 2 and my seminar (on Shakespeare) all have finals on Monday (a week from tomorrow.) Those should go well enough. 

What I'm worried about is my Physics final, on the Thursday (the 18th). My class performance has been alright, but due to a few issues with the class (partially due to me choking, and partially due to my professor's incredibly terrible job at being a professor) I'm sort of at a do-or-die level right now. I did terribly on my midterms, and I have no idea where they lie with the curve, so I'm assuming that I need a really good score on the final to break even and get a C in the class. 

So yeah.


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## Negrek (Dec 7, 2014)

> It can't possibly be that hard, really; in general, cells are not incredibly difficult.


lol wow that's me out of a job then

No finals for me ever again; none that count, anyway. I'm sure I'll take some online courses and the like for fun, but my transcript is pretty well done and over with now.


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## kyeugh (Dec 8, 2014)

Negrek said:


> lol wow that's me out of a job then


I'm in ninth grade.  They're probably super hard in real life, but I'm just learning about the basics for now, and presumably, it doesn't get that much harder in highschool, unless chemistry involves learning about cell anatomy.


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## Negrek (Dec 8, 2014)

I know. I was just rather tickled by the way you phrased it. :)


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## hopeandjoy (Dec 8, 2014)

Final for my Utopia in America class tomorrow, Bio on Thursday, and a 12-page term paper due on foundlings and orphans in pre-modern Europe due the 17th.

While I have all my literature for my term paper, I, naturally, have not even begun to read it and plan the paper.



Spoiler: gif


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## Murkrow (Dec 8, 2014)

My exams aren't until January. As always, I don't feel worried about them but I do feel worried that I'm not worrying about them.

Analysis is probably the one I should be most worried about. My other courses are either easy or I've concentrated most of my homework effort on. Analysis is in the middle in that it isn't easy but it's not hard enough for me to work harder on it throughout the year than my other courses.


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## Autumn (Dec 9, 2014)

4/6 exams done.

Music History was probably the one I'm least confident about, simply because despite having a photographic memory my ability to remember dates and names of musical works (especially when they're from the damn 1600s) is not exactly top-notch. I know I got a 94 on the listening portion, though, which is a good sign at least.

Music in Therapy was surprisingly easy. Here my photographic memory actually did help. I knew we were going to have to be able to provide examples of the six settings and four levels of music we talked about - a total of 24 possibilities. I wrote down an example of each possibility on my review sheet, glanced over it right before the test, and was able to use my photographic memory to remember where on the sheet each possibility had been so I could transfer it to the test. Music in Therapy isn't the hardest class anyway; if you pay attention and know some basic vocab, the rest comes logically.

My conducting final was the best one yet! I was conducting this little piece from Handel's Messiah. I got every cue and was attentive to every dynamic and stylistic change, surpassing the teacher's expectations. (He knows I'm an atheist, and he joked afterward that he thought I had been converted for a little bit during my conducting it.) I was also really solid on the questions he asked about Handel and the Messiah itself - mostly cause we just talked about Handel and the Messiah in music history, heh.

Then was my guitar proficiency. I had to play a few prepared tunes, sight read both normal music and tab style (and put chords to the staff music), play in a few different styles, transpose at will, and respond to the teacher asking me for specific artists or genres. That latter part I had the most trouble on - I didn't know any heavy metal, spiritual, or Taylor Swift, three of the things she asked for (my poor theoretical music therapy clients ; ;) but I was able to redirect... usually. Either way I passed (though it wouldn't have mattered if I failed. The proficiency is solely for music therapy majors, which means I didn't need to take it since I'm switching to bachelor of arts in music this coming semester. I took the proficiency because I wanted to.), with the stipulation that I have to perform on guitar in front of my peers in the spring, so that I might work on my vocal abilities (my biggest concern - dammit, Jim, I'm an instrumentalist, not a singer!) in the meantime. I've gotten so much more confident since starting school, so it's not a problem for me to do that, haha.

Tomorrow is my piano jury and Italian, neither of which I'm particularly worried about.


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## DarkAura (Dec 10, 2014)

My finals are next week on Thursday and Friday. I don't really know what I'll be exactly _doing_ for each class, but I do know that half of them don't even contribute to any large portion of my grades. Like, Honors English is 5%, I believe. and I get half days, so cool?


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## hopeandjoy (Dec 10, 2014)

DarkAura said:


> My finals are next week on Thursday and Friday. I don't really know what I'll be exactly _doing_ for each class, but I do know that half of them don't even contribute to any large portion of my grades. *Like, Honors English is 5%, I believe*. and I get half days, so cool?


...I miss high school already. orz


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## DarkAura (Dec 10, 2014)

Yeah, well, that 5% is kind of a double-edged sword, since I miiight be failing that class with a 25% F.


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## blazheirio889 (Dec 10, 2014)

Three exams down, one to go! Animal physiology went alright, genes to organisms was mehhh (because I thought the exam was cumulative so I spent a bunch of time reviewing the first section of the course which /wasn't on the test/), and biopsychology went amazing. There was only one question I totally blanked on and it was worth only two marks, so I drew a confused penguin in the answer space.


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## Music Dragon (Dec 10, 2014)

blazheirio889 said:


> There was only one question I totally blanked on and it was worth only two marks, so I drew a confused penguin in the answer space.


I love it when my students draw things or write messages on their exams! But I doubt they love it when I write things back.

One time when we were grading Calculus I exams, this one guy had gotten 0 as the answer on a question where the answer was definitely not 0. Since he got no points on that problem, we were tempted to write "How did you get this to be 0? Here, have another 0!"

Another guy on the same test wrote "It's very obvious that the answer is..." and then followed up with an incredibly long and messy calculation that gave the wrong answer, and I considered leaving the comment "Not so very obvious now, is it?"

(Of course I didn't actually do any of the above. But it was tempting.) 

I also had one student who would always finish tests ahead of time and then spend the last half hour drawing weird creatures on the back of the test. Like giraffe rabbits and stuff.


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## Eifie (Dec 11, 2014)

Music Dragon said:


> I love it when my students draw things or write messages on their exams! But I doubt they love it when I write things back.
> 
> One time when we were grading Calculus I exams, this one guy had gotten 0 as the answer on a question where the answer was definitely not 0. Since he got no points on that problem, we were tempted to write "How did you get this to be 0? Here, have another 0!"
> 
> ...


My calculus TA used to write stuff on our problem sets when we got perfect like "show your friends!" or "put this on your fridge!" It was adorable.

There was a question on our last test for that course where I got totally stuck on this integral because of some stupid mistake and I ended up with this ridiculously complicated integral that I was completely unable to solve, so after a page and a half of calculations I gave up and drew a huge sad face. Whoever marked it wrote "LOL. good effort though!" or something and on a blank page proceeded to write out _the entire solution to the problem_ in complete detail _with diagrams_ and was like "I think this is where you got stuck:" with an arrow to one part of it and then ended it like "I hope this helps!" They have to mark so many tests and I was so touched that whoever it was took the time to write all of that, it was so sweet ;;

I love writing stuff for my TAs on my tests and I love it even more when they write back :p


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## M&F (Dec 11, 2014)

I've written a fair deal of stuff in my German tests recently, but not on questions I didn't know the answer for -- they were just occasional side notes on the questions themselves.

For example, there was one where you had to fill in blanks with "was" or "had", in proper conjugation. One of the phrases was like "Ethan [had] a dog". I answered it correctly, and then scribbled on the side "But _was_ he ever a dog?", in German. (possibly faulty german, that was still just my first year after all)


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## Negrek (Dec 11, 2014)

> I love it when my students draw things or write messages on their exams! But I doubt they love it when I write things back.


Haha, I did have one student write a lot of comments on the test questions, which were pretty funny, so I wrote "Nice commentary!" up by her score.

But she kind of got a poor grade, so I hope that didn't come across as dickish. I really did appreciate it!


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## Autumn (Dec 11, 2014)

My AP music theory teacher in high school would make his dislikes in the homework assignments very clear by way of "BOOO!" or "NO!". My favorite was when a classmate had too much space between two written voices, so the teacher drew a truck driving in between the voices.


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## blazheirio889 (Dec 11, 2014)

Music Dragon said:


> I love it when my students draw things or write messages on their exams! But I doubt they love it when I write things back


I'd probably appreciate if it they wrote back! I'm always a bit paranoid that TAs or profs will be offended I doodled or tried to be witty on their precious test papers. 

I think the penguin would appreciate it too. It's always so lonely.



Altissimo said:


> My favorite was when a classmate had too much space between two written voices, so the teacher drew a truck driving in between the voices.


That is /beautiful/


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## Flora (Dec 12, 2014)

My Music Theory professor has this little face he draws when you double leading tones in compositions which gets progressively angrier the more you do it. It shouldn't be very funny, but the last few times he's drawn it on the board he's added hair and things to it and it's just _hysterical i can't deal_


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## I liek Squirtles (Dec 12, 2014)

I did my English final yesterday. It was easy but it was also very... entertaining. There were three questions that referenced a reading that wasn't on the exam. My theories are either my teacher (who did not show up for the final, thanks very much) was drunk, pulled an all-nighter, or pulled a drunk all-nighter.


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## kyeugh (Dec 12, 2014)

Apparently I have all my finals next week!  Five of them.  One is optional, I'm not sure what the standing is on the rest.  I'm sort of stressed out suddenly, but I'll probably do fine, assuming my computer doesn't flip out and make me lose control of the touchpad again.  (When that happens, it can only be fixed by restarting the computer, which is very, very bad considering the method with which these tests are taken.)


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## Wargle (Dec 13, 2014)

Graduated and this doesn't apply to me but talking anyway.


Our classes were divided into A and B parts, and there was a Final. You always had to take the final. If you passed any two of the three, you passed the class.

I did well on my finals, and knew I would, but they always worried me. The first couple were actual written tests, some were projects where we had to produce things to get graded.

When I did marching band in high school, our final was a big contest/parade


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## kyeugh (Dec 15, 2014)

I took my English finals today, all of which were optional for some reason.  I decided to abstain from taking the grammar one, since I'm relatively awful at grammar and it sucks, but I took the vocabulary and literature exams.  I received a perfect score for the vocabulary test, but the literature test had a significant amount of questions regarding stories that we never read, or were required to read.  I ended up getting a 69% on that one, which is a D.  I had a word with my teacher about it, and hopefully she'll reset the test and allow me to take it again _without_ the questions I couldn't answer.

...Yeah, virtual school is pretty lenient about finals, especially the optional ones.


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## Worst Username Ever (Dec 16, 2014)

Already done with the "Digital Technology"(which is various computer technology/IT stuff) and Databases (which went horrible, completely forgot a few of the things)... then I got Programming (Java) in a few days and I'm really not looking forwards to that ;_;
At least I get to go on to the next year (actual game design, instrad of this "basic info" year that's the same for everyone) even if I fail a subject, which is a huge relief (apparently I have several opportunities to retake them these 3 years...) This stuff turned out to be harder than I expected


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## hopeandjoy (Dec 16, 2014)

Just five pages to go on my essay.

I can do it.

I might even sleep tomorrow.

There's nothing more glorious than working in Chicago style and seeing a quarter of your page taken up by footnotes.


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## Murkrow (Jan 12, 2015)

So have those of you who had your exams in December had your results?


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## hopeandjoy (Jan 13, 2015)

I don't really have the specifics for any classes other than a 72 on my Bio final but I managed to get between a B and an A in all my classes so yay?

Not looking forward to next finals and Organic Chemistry.


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## Flora (Jan 13, 2015)

i did alright? i mean i failed a class but legit everyone i've said this to was all "yeah that teacher's hard and also _forcing kids to go to an off-campus event for a grade_ isn't cool especially for the theater kids" (there were multiple, but i missed the _single one where they provided transportation_ and i don't drive)

i somehow avoided a massive gpa drop though which is astounding

otherwise my classes were good!


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